I Am Love

The main thing I considered while watching this film was “who exactly is love?” The answer, I found, was quite simple: Emma and Antonio, separately and together. They are also death and sorrow.

In the beginning of the film, we see evidence in pictures that Emma is unfulfilled. We see pictures of her looking like an attentive, loving wife and mother while her husband is consumed with his business and was even shown talking on his cell phone in a picture. She has so much love that no one notices except for her daughter. 

Antonio exhibits his unfulfilled love completely differently. He lives alone and cooks for a living. Cooking is seen as an act of love or caring, like bringing a cake over. Emma later almost literally falls in love with the food he serves at his restaurant. He exhibits love for the family by willingly cooking for their parties and not actively take part in socializing. 

Together, Emma and Antonio encounter love when, early in their relationship, they have this strange merging of fantasies by both standing by double swinging doors with port holes on each which they see one another through the window. The fantasy merges their houses but they appear to be together. It’s almost like an out-of-body experience for both of them and they have similar reactions when the fantasy is interrupted. The viewer doesn’t realize this is all in their heads until Edoardo walks into Antonio’s kitchen instead of reacting to his mother making out with his best friend. 

Their love is the ultimate cause of Edo’s death. While it was a mere accident, the fight would not have taken place if she had not left him clues to figure out something that disturbing. In this way, the couple is death and sorrow, proof that the relationship could never work out long-term. It was a destroying force by literally killing Edo right after he tells his mother he wants nothing to do with her (opposite of love?) and tearing Emma’s family apart. So maybe the movie was inappropriately titled and should have been more something more relatable to destructive love.

Symbols:

The book Emma took out of the bookstore without paying while she was following Antonio in Sermeno: Emma leaves it in Antonio’s kitchen after their first “date” (using the term loosely) to ensure that she would be seeing him again. When Edo sees the book and flips through it, Antonio has an immediate reaction that. without showing any emotion, takes the book away. He later gives it back to Emma when they meet in a bar to go over what he’s going to make for the party at her house. Emma stashes the book in her closet and at the very end of the film, Emma rummages through her closet and we see the book buried under junk. Maybe a symbol for hidden, forbidden passion or desire.

Ukha: Edo’s favorite food that only Emma knows how to make because she was taught when she lived in Russia. She teaches Antonio how to make it, at his request, so that it is served at the party at the end of the movie. Antonio’s reason for preparing the soup was because it is Edo’s favorite. When it is served, Edo has a negative reaction as he realizes that this means that his mom and his best friend have been spending a considerable amount of time together and then realizes they’ve been romantically involved. Did Antonio intentionally do that because he knew Edo would figure it out or was it really just a friendly gesture? 

Cutting off hair: Emma’s daughter, Betta comes home with very short hair and announces to her mother that she is in a romantic relationship with another woman. This drastic change is reflected in her new hair. Later, Emma allows Antonio to cut a significant amount of her hair off and it actually resembles her daughters hair cut. This is reflective of her drastic change which is cheating on her husband with her son’s best friend. Later, a few strands of her cut off hair left behind on Antonio’s patio assist Edo in coming to the conclusion that they are involved. This change is so remarkable that after her son’s funeral, she tells her husband that “you no longer know who I am” and that she loves Antonio to which he replies “you don’t exist.” 

Mirrors and windows: on many occasions, we see a reflection of Emma or of her looking at her own reflection. The first time this happens it is in Emma’s bathroom. There’s another instance when she follows Antonio around Sermeno and looks at her reflection in a mirror in a store. Instead of seeing that as her making sure she looks alright before talking to him, I think she was observing the changes that were already taking place involving her desire for Antonio before anything even officially starts. She then turns and looks out the window of the shop and seems to make very direct eye contact with Antonio who is outside. She walks out and nearly runs into him so he couldn’t have been staring at her through the window. Is this a forethought to running into him or a strange vision? After the first time Emma is involved with Antonio, she runs home and into her bathroom and looks at herself in the mirror which is far away and I couldn’t tell if she was laughing or crying but I’m pretty sure it was happiness. I took this reflection to represent how she was realizing how big the world could be outside of her family and the space she had for potential growth as a person. As before mentioned, there is another window scene between Antonio and Emma that was a mutual fantasy. 

Kitesh: Emma’s real, Russian name. Her husband started calling her Emma when they first met for no reason and she just adopted the name. No one calls her Kitesh or even knows about it so Antonio calls her that. It’s a secret identity that only he has access to. 

“’Happy’ is a word that makes one sad” – Betta. Happiness is like desire: the idea of it is enough to make you run around in circles for the rest of your life but you’ll never attain what you want out of it so it will perpetually cause sadness. Happiness is temporary and love kind of is too, unfortunately.